Partners with God
With the celebration of the feast of Pentecost a few weeks ago, we have shifted from the Easter season to the Season after Pentecost, also known as “ordinary time”. This liturgical season is the longest of all the seasons on the church calendar, and for some perhaps the most boring. But really the season after Pentecost is an opportunity for us to look more closely at the mission, ministry and miracles of Jesus and the early church. What we will find is not “ordinary” or “boring” stories, but really pretty extraordinary moments in the life of Jesus and his friends. Now before we just jump into the gospel story from Mark, I feel compelled to give a nod to the reading from Genesis. For centuries, this has been the story used to determine the doctrine of original sin...that humans chose to be disobedient to God, that in this choosing we got expelled from the garden of Eden (perfection), and that we have been “broken” ever since. Augustine loved to pontificate on this kind of text, and so did other preachers and theologians since then as a way of keeping us “in our place”. This story of Adam blaming Eve for “tempting” him has been used over and over to keep women in positions of inequality; it was (and still is) used as the reason for why women couldn’t hold leadership positions in the church and for the levitical laws that prohibited women from swearing oaths or owning property. During the second wave of the feminist movement, women would cite this story not as Eve’s temptation of Adam, but as Adam’s great “passing of the buck” and his inability to take responsibility for his choices. Feminist writers and poets reclaimed Eve as a woman that was curious, bold, and uninhibited. Countless books on spirituality, forgiveness and redemption have been written by Jewish and Christian women who claim Eve as a sister in spiritual awareness, instead of trying to prove that we have evolved to a more enlightened state and need to be redeemed from Eve’s original sin. I have some very definite opinions about how the scriptural tradition and subsequent church fathers have written and preached on Eve as a way of oppressing women...but perhaps now is not the time. The nugget that I hope you’ll take away from the Genesis reading is about relationship. In this short piece of text from Genesis, God asks “where are you”--God is looking for Adam and Eve--and in essence, God is looking for us. In the garden, Adam and Eve were companions with God. Perhaps they were created to be partners with God in the ongoing creation and evolution of this good earth. We get a sense that God is always looking for partners throughout the Hebrew Bible--Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Sarah, Miriam, Deborah--all partners in building up the kingdom of God. So if you can, hang on to this idea that God is looking for God’s partners. Whew! Now in the Gospel of Mark, we have another one of those stories, like the Genesis story, that has unfortunately been misread. Here we have Jesus’ “mother and brothers” worried about him and then Jesus denying that they are his family. I have spent the last several semesters reading so much commentary on Mary’s role in Jesus ministry, that when I get to this particular story, I just want to be sick. For our early church fathers through the middle ages, this story was used as a way to remind readers that Mary had “served her purpose” and was no longer important to the story of Jesus. It was again used to oppress women--that their only purpose was to be mothers and then step aside. This story was used to take away the agency of women who might want to be leaders in their communities and churches because clearly Jesus had turned his back on his mother. Thanks early church fathers for making my life difficult! (sorry, I get on my soap box about this stuff) But let’s try to forget about the early church fathers and middle ages theologians for a moment, ok? Let’s instead try to focus on what is really going on in this story from Mark. Here we are coming in mid-sentence as it were. Jesus has been busy healing and casting out demons, and everyone wants to know who he thinks he is and where does he get the power (and authority) to do this stuff. His mother and brothers are worried about him because they see the agitation rising against him. We don’t know if they think he’s the messiah or not...the writer of Mark doesn’t tell us. What we do know is that he is surrounded by people who have been looking for him--the possessed and dispossessed, the lame, the cripple, the orphaned, the outcast--and here he finds his partners--his family, if you will--that will become the impetus for his mission and ministry. I think what’s hard for us to hear sometimes is that who God is looking for to partner in kingdom building ministry is almost never who we think it SHOULD be. This is especially hard for ministers or other church leaders because we have a sense of calling--that God called us to do God’s work, that we have been specially selected. But friends, I can tell you that personally, the people who have most often ministered to me--those who have been a balm for my brokenness and taught me about healing--have not always been the ones that SHOULD be doing that ministry. It’s been the woman who struggles with depression and anxiety, the young woman who risked coming out to her parents, the unhoused man who looks out for others who are also unhoused, the rejected and the social misfits. And because I’m among those who SHOULD be ministering, I often don’t see God’s partner that’s been part of my journey until after the fact. My point is this...sometimes we are like Adam--we pass the buck on who’s to blame for what’s wrong. Sometimes we are like Eve--curious, bold, and willing to take risks. Sometimes we are are the elected or chosen ones who SHOULD be sharing the good news and offering healing, and sometimes we’re the ones gathered around Jesus, looking for him as much as God is looking for us. Our boundaries as children of God are not rigid--they are permeable and solely created by us. But God is always looking for us--looking for us to participate as the family of God, kinship builders, healers, and partners.
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AuthorI don't know what the future of the church is, but I know that we will continue to be a place of sanctuary and hope, working towards healing in the world. Archives
October 2017
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